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Gabriel manages to walk for two days before he has to stop and figure out what's
wrong with his (his, what a wild thought!) body. He's never experienced hunger, or thirst, or fatigue before, so he sits down by the side of the road, keeps one thumb out (just in case) and takes some time to catalogue his body's reactions to physical stimulus.
Pain. That's the first one. Every muscle hurts, and if it doesn't hurt, there's the looming promise that it will hurt, soon, if he keeps moving. Pressing his fingers against the corded muscles of his calves makes his legs and his hand hurt. If he forgets to blink for too long, his eyes start to water and sting. Walking is painful. His feet feel like they're on fire. He reaches down, carefully works off his shoes, and lets the cooler air hit them, and it helps.
His feet smell – that's a new one, too.
The sun is just beginning to rise. It splashes over the sky like watercolors, brilliant pinks and reds and yellows, carnations blooming across the heavens. It's the first time he's ever used the term 'heavens' as just a word, rather than an actual place. He knows that Heaven still exists, even if he can't feel it, but he also can see, looking up at the sky, how humans would consider the rising and setting sun to be a sort of heaven in and of itself.
Thirst is the most pressing issue. Gabriel can ignore the dull throbbing in his feet and legs, and he can ignore the gnawing ache in his stomach, but he thinks that if he ignores his dry mouth, blurring vision, and heavy head any longer he might end up squandering his second chance before he ever even gets to fully appreciate it.
He vaguely presses at the pockets of his jeans, turning up three one-dollar bills, a watermelon Jolly Rancher, and lint. None of which will help him in his current situation. He looks longingly at the Jolly Rancher, considering, for a moment, that it might make him feel less thirsty, even if it doesn't actually do anything for his body. Then he puts it back in his pocket, where it sits, sticky and unpromising.
He puts his shoes back on and keeps walking.
~
On the third day, it rains.
Gabriel's never given thanks to his Father before, either. Not like this. Not raising his face to the sky and thinking thank you, thank you, directed not towards the ineffable glory of God, but some fathomless deity now so far beyond his comprehension that to even see his Father's face would destroy him from the inside out.
He cups his hands and drinks until he feels he cannot drink any more. Until the pain in his stomach eclipses the pain in his mind and his soul, and he has to lean over the side of the road and retch, expelling half the water he'd consumed. There is more rain, and more, and yet more, and Gabriel is soaked to the bone. He cups his hands and drinks slower, this time. Drinks less. His stomach gurgles unhappily, but the water stays down. He feels stupidly accomplished, and realizes that this is what his existence will be about from now on – a series of meaningless joys overshadowed by countless hardships and let-downs. He will never again be able to hear his Brothers and Sisters singing.
He walks. The soles of his feet form blisters. Some of them scab over, forming calluses, while others rupture and spot his socks with blood.
He has no choice but to keep walking.
~
On the fourth day, he begins to fall asleep a little, while he's walking, and he stumbles away from the road. He ends up tripping, sliding down into a ditch, and it's as he's mourning his dusty pants and his bruised tailbone that he realizes he's sitting in the shade of a bush, heavily laden with oval-shaped, indigo berries. They smell wonderful, and it's heartening to realize that even death (and subsequent mortality) hasn't rid him of his sweet tooth.
This is getting ridiculous, he thinks, but reaches up and breaks off a cluster of berries. No one is ever this lucky – he may not be used to being human, but he's spent enough time around them to know that bad shit happens to ordinary people every day, and since he no longer counts as extraordinary, logically, he should be screwed. He should have collapsed from exhaustion by now, but somehow, every day, he finds the energy and the strength to keep moving. He should have started hallucinating from thirst days ago – that is, until rain clouds conveniently passed overhead. And now there's this. Gabriel is no botanist, but he's willing to bet that it's weird to find a fruit-bearing bush growing along the side of a dusty highway in the middle of nowhere. It should have died from the heat, by now. The branches should have been picked clean, by birds or by other animals. It shouldn't exist.
And yet it does.
Gabriel breaks open a few of the berries first, crushing them between his fingers, smearing the dark juice over his skin. According to Murphy's Law, there ought to be spiders nesting inside them, but all he gets are a couple of large seeds and sticky fingers. He pops the crushed remains into his mouth, reminding himself to chew, and then swallows. The only reason he can think of for the berries to still be growing on the bush is that they're poisonous, a hazard he has never had to contend with before. He figures if he eats a few, and then waits for a while, he'll be able to tell.
An hour later, he shrugs and, with no ill effects raging through his body, he pops a handful of berries into his mouth, shoves as many into his jacket pockets as he can fit, picks himself up, and continues walking.
As he walks, he sends up another silent prayer to his Father: I love you. Thank you. Forgive me.
~
Gabriel doesn't keep track of how many miles he's walked. Once, he would have been able to tell anyone exactly how many feet were in a mile, how many inches, centimeters, femtometers. Not any more. Over the past four days, he's noticed that his memory is working differently – he remembers the basics, like how to breathe and walk and swallow, but at one point he reached for memories of an episode of Big Brother and there had been nothing there. As if he'd never watched it in the first place, though he'll readily swear that he did. He wonders how long it will be until he forgets the entire show.
He wonders if he'll forget other things, too, like what his favorite candy bar is, or the first time he ever met his vessel.
Toblerones, he reminds himself, and eats the berries in his pocket, and thinks about the television shows he used to watch, how he's probably missed a few episodes by now. He thinks about Castiel, too – he's been doing that a lot, lately. There's not much else to do, besides think about what he wants to say. 'You're all I have now, please forgive me' sounds a little needy to him, and 'I did what I thought was right' is just way too pretentious. He did what he thought was necessary – that never made it right.
Eventually he settles on a simple 'I'm sorry,' and he repeats it as he walks, lest he somehow forget Castiel's face.
"I'm sorry," he mutters, the words falling in time with his footsteps. It's a rhythm. He walks to it, lets it drive him. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
By the fifth day, he's thirsty again. It's no surprise. Gabriel is amazed at how fragile the human body is. He stubs his toe on a rock and he risks breaking the tiny bones there. He forgets to eat for a few hours (well, more like ten) and fatigue settles on him like a coat of heavy paint.
Fortunately, day five is also the day that he stumbles upon a gas station. His eyes water when he spots it in the distance, and for a few minutes he can't figure it out – there isn't any dust in his eyes, he hasn't been staring at the sun, he's been remembering to blink, so what?
He realizes, once he steps through the door and cool air blasts over his skin. A tear rolls down his cheek, and he rubs it away, thinking, Ah. Relief. He'd thought that was just an expression.
The gas station has a bathroom. Gabriel locks himself in it, and cups his hands under the faucet, and drinks until he's no longer thirsty. Then he fumbles with his jeans, unzips them, and pisses until he feels a couple pounds lighter. There's no easy system of matter to energy conversion, here – everything that goes in will eventually come out. It's one of the many parts of human physiology that most angels choose to ignore. His Father's explanation had been 'it seemed like a good idea at the time,' and it was always left at that. Gabriel finds himself filled with a newfound dislike for that excuse.
He washes his hands. Twice. He saw what the Spanish Flu did, and he's not about to risk his new mortality. For all he knows, he hasn't got any immunity. None. Better safe than sorry.
He exits the bathroom, uses his three dollars to buy a Coke and some Skittles, and then asks the man behind the counter what day it is, where he is. What city is the nearest? How far is it?
"Sharon," the attendant says, glancing at the berry juice staining Gabriel's jacket, the dust that covers his boots and jeans. "About fifteen miles."
"Figures."
"You okay? You're looking a little peaked."
I was dead. "I was robbed."
"Robbed? Jesus, boy, no wonder you look like shit. You got any way to get home?"
"I've been walking for five days. If I'd had a way, I would've used it by now." He's surprised by the harsh snap in his voice. He's annoyed. Humans ask the stupidest questions. The man takes a phone out from under the counter, sets it in front of Gabriel.
"You need to call nine-one-one? Get yourself checked out at a hospital?"
He has no identity. His vessel effectively died in 1483 – he's a nonentity. As far as the world is concerned, he's nobody. He doesn't exist. Even so, he says, "Yeah, sure," and picks up the phone, cradling it against his cheek while he dials. The woman on the other end is very polite – she expresses sympathy, asks him for his location, tells him that they'll send an ambulance right over, and then hangs up.
He clicks the phone back into its cradle, and then slides it across the counter. The attendant stares at him.
"You don't have a wife you want to call? Kids?"
Gabriel shakes his head. "Nobody."
"There must be someone. Family?"
The only member of his family he wants to see right now is Castiel, and all the others can kiss his mortal ass. But he thinks of Sam and Dean Winchester, and wonders if, maybe, he can contact them somehow. "No one I have the number of. You got a laptop I could use?"
The attendant pulls something from his pocket, slides it across the counter. "I got an iPhone."
He presses the 'home' button and the iPhone blinks into life. "That works."
~
The ambulance arrives after about an hour, which Gabriel spends talking to the attendant (his name, it turns out, is Jim), eating his Skittles, and drinking his Coke. Tastes are amplified, now – the sugar is almost cloying, it's so sweet, and Gabriel ends up throwing half the Skittles away. Jim offers him some beef jerky instead, but the salt makes Gabriel's mouth feel tacky and hypersensitive. It doesn't taste the way meat should. He wonders if that's a fault of the jerky, or a fault of his own.
He gets to ride in an ambulance, though, which is a new experience for him. They give him I.V. fluids and ask him questions about what happened.
"I was robbed." The needle slides into his arm, a brief bite, and then the EMT tapes over it. "Walked for a couple days. No big deal."
"No big deal? That highway's a long stretch of fuck-all, dude. You're lucky. Someone upstairs must really like you, huh?"
"Yeah," Gabriel sighs. Not enough to bring me back Himself. "I guess."
"Shit, you're not like, atheist, are you? I don't wanna be offensive."
"Don't worry about it."
He watches the fluids leak into his body, slow and steady. He doesn't feel the immediate sense of relief that he'd experienced when it had rained, but he supposes this is more efficient, in the long run. The stuff they're pumping him full of probably has nutrients and minerals in it, too.
"Why're your pockets blue?"
Gabriel glances down. Being bustled into the ambulance has crushed the remaining berries in his jacket pockets, and the juice stains the fabric a bright, pure indigo. He inches his hand inside, pulling out a berry that's still mostly intact. He passes it off to the EMT, who examines it, then deftly pops it into his mouth.
"Oregon blueberries," he explains, chewing quickly. "Someone must have been transporting seeds…maybe some of 'em fell out and started growing. They do pretty well, even in this sort of heat."
"You know a lot about plants." Gabriel used to know a lot about everything.
"Yeah, well. Call it a hobby."
The rest of the drive to the hospital is made in silence, at least on Gabriel's part. The EMT talks about everything from the price of gas ("Too fuckin' expensive, am I right?") to his mother's hip surgery ("Tripped over the cat, I swear the thing's goddamn evil."). Gabriel isn't used to being the quiet one, but now he finds himself without anything to say. Is he supposed to commiserate? Yeah, the EMT's mother is in the hospital, but he just came back from the dead, so it's not all that bad? Is he supposed to just listen? Staying quiet seems the safest route, and no one is calling him on it.
He realizes that, to the EMT, to Jim the gas station attendant, he's just some guy. If he's quiet, they have no way of knowing that it isn't normal for him. No one does, except for Castiel and the Winchesters. Ostensibly, he could start a new life as a mortal. He could find someone to get him fake identification, a fake birth certificate (they do that, right? He thinks he saw it on T.V. once), and he could get a job. Buy a house, or at least a car. He has the option of never needing to deal with his family, or the Apocalypse, ever again (assuming, of course, the Winchesters manage to stop it).
So why the hell isn't he taking it?
Because I'm an idiot, he thinks. I'm a massive, unrepentant idiot. But he's an idiot who's intent on finding the only brother who'll give a shit what happened to him, so that's a start. At least he has a purpose.
They reach the hospital within the hour, and Gabriel's grateful that he doesn't have to listen to the overly talkative EMT any more. His voice grates on Gabriel's ears – like the Skittles being too sweet, and the jerky being too salty, he hears sounds that wouldn't have bothered him as an archangel, and yet now it feels like his eardrums are being shredded. The noise and the bustle of the hospital is almost overwhelming, and it takes him a few minutes to acclimate as he's transferred from the ambulance to a wheelchair, and then to an empty, blindingly white room. The whole building smells strongly of sick people and disinfectant, two smells that he would think would cancel each other out, and yet instead they combine into something that assaults the soul as well as the senses.
The nurse who rigs him up to yet another I.V. drip is both young, and has truly magnificent breasts. Gabriel's pleased to note that becoming human has in no way diminished his love for a nice rack. Nevertheless, he tries to keep his appreciation to a minimum – she probably deals with amorous glances and wandering hands all the time. It must get boring, after a while.
"We just need your name and your emergency contact information, sir," the nurse says, polite and efficient. Gabriel would be impressed if it weren't for the fact that he has no emergency contact information, and no name that would be considered valid by the United States government.
But he's got the phone number of a prophet (garnered from a particularly enthusiastic website off of Jim's iPhone), and, starting about now, he also has selective amnesia.
"I don't remember," he says, trying to hit that exact note of mournfulness and confusion that will have the overworked nurse sympathizing with him. Her expression softens, and it's good to know he hasn't lost his ability to manipulate, either. "I think I was robbed. When I woke up, my phone and wallet were gone…"
"It's alright, sir," she offers, placing a soothing hand on his wrist. Their skin scrapes together – it feels strange, and too intense. "Posttraumatic stress can cause temporary amnesia, even if there isn't any head trauma involved. Hopefully you'll start remembering soon."
"I think my name might be Gabriel."
"Good, that's good – do you have any family, Gabriel? Or a friend we could call?"
He pauses, as if thinking hard, and then offers, hesitantly, "I remember a phone number, but I'm not sure who it belongs to."
"Well, we can try it. Do you remember all the digits?"
Gabriel holds in a smile. As it just so happens, he does.
~
This is how the conversation between Sharon Hospital and one Chuck Shurley goes:
"Hello, this is Sharon Hospital in Connecticut, calling in regards to a recently admitted amnesia patient…"
"Wait, hold on, Sharon? Connecticut?"
"…who was only able to provide us with this phone number. Sir, may I ask your name, and whether you have any friends or family by the name of Gabriel?"
"Chuck Shurley…wait, Gabriel? Shit, shit, hold on."
"Sir? Are you alright?"
"Yes. Yes, I'm fine, just…Christ. Gabriel? You're sure? What's he look like?"
"Caucasian male, approximately sixty-seven inches tall, brown hair, green eyes. Looks about thirty-five."
"Sixty…Like, five foot six? Did he have candy?"
"Five foot seven, sir. He…had a Jolly Rancher in his pocket?"
"Shit. Oh, God – is he hurt? He's not like, dying or anything?"
"He was admitted with severe dehydration and malnutrition, but aside from that, he's physically fit. It's the amnesia we're worried about. Sir, I'm sorry, but I have to ask…what your relationship with this man is?"
"He's, uh, he's my cousin. Gabriel Shurley. Yeah. Hey, is there any way I can talk to him? Just to make sure he's okay?"
"He might not remember you, sir, but I can have you transferred to the phone in his room. Hold, please."
Beep.
"Hello, Casa de Gabriel, Gabriel speak-"
"You utter shit."
"Prophet?"
"Who did you think it was, Marilyn Monroe? What the fuck were you thinking with that stunt? I thought you were dead. Everyone thinks you're dead!"
"I was."
"And the Winchesters have been…wait, what?"
"I was dead."
"And now you're…not?"
"Nope."
"That's…confusing."
"You're a prophet, aren't you supposed to know these things?"
"You dropped off the radar, man. I saw you get stabbed, I saw you die, and then nothing. Becky cried when I told her, you know. You made Becky cry."
"Good to know I've got fans."
"Dude, you made Becky cry. That's different from making other people cry. Do you have any idea how broken up she's been? She says no one will want to read her fanfic now."
"Does that mean you won't come and pick me up?"
"You're an archangel, just zap yourself out of there."
"Yeah, about that…I'm not. An archangel, I mean. Not anymore."
"…Connecticut, huh? I'll be there in…Jesus, gimme a day or so. Don't move."
Click.
~
It takes Chuck a day and a half to get to Sharon Hospital. Gabriel knows because, between restless naps and fluttering nurses, he keeps an eye on the clock, making sure that his grasp of time and numbers doesn't fade along with his grasp of reality television. He's forgetting things – like how Geneva looks as the sun sets, sparkling off the snow and the lake, or that one time Spike Lee used him as an extra in one of his movies. He can't remember the title. He can barely remember Spike Lee's face.
Not everything is fading, thankfully. He can remember how to count and read, he remembers how to do up his pants and shirt, and he knows, instinctively, that he likes sweet things, but not sour ones. Spicy, but not too spicy. It's only moments in time that are vanishing, things that are somehow intrinsically linked to what he knew of himself before. He never would have gotten to Geneva if he hadn't had the ability to teleport. He never would have been in that movie if he hadn't known precisely where Spike Lee was shooting, and what, and why, and how to portray himself in order to get the part.
It sucks. Pretty soon, more than half the experiences he's had are going to be like smudges of ink on paper – still there, but illegible. Untranslatable. Humans can only remember so much in the first place…he supposes this is his mortal brain's way of dealing with a couple thousand years' worth of knowledge. People, places, things, and he feels an acute sadness wash over him, knowing he's not going to be able to remember the names and faces of all the people he's slept with, all the different foods he's tried and the countries he's been to, nor the saints, the martyrs, the apostles. All lost.
When Chuck arrives (looking decidedly tired and worn), it's with a giant, chocolate Easter bunny in hand. Easter, as far as Gabriel knows, has been over for a while, so it's probably from a Dollar Store. He carries it the way someone might carry an offering to an altar, and he sets it down on the table next to Gabriel's bed (carefully, like it'll break) before he takes a seat.
"So," he says, and Gabriel shrugs. Chuck looks a little better than the last time Gabriel peeked in on him, back when Raphael was still on prophet duty and Chuck was drinking himself into a coma every night. He looks like he's filled out his clothes a little bit, and his beard is actually a beard, not just the patches that he missed while shaving.
Gabriel reaches for the chocolate, glares at his own arm when he realizes that the I.V. drip is preventing him from reaching too far out of bed. It pulls uncomfortably at his skin, and the thought of the needle sliding out, a bull's-eye of blood in the middle of the dark iodine stain, makes him feel nauseous.
"I guess…how's mortality treating you?"
Gabriel scowls, and Chuck raises his hands in defeat, or maybe fear. "Shit. Sorry. Uh, how do I know it's really…y'know, you?"
"Do you still jerk off into that Superman sock?"
Chuck bows his head, cheeks flaring crimson. "That…that's none of your business. And I have a girlfriend, now!" He risks a glance up, shoulders hunched. "Er. Had a girlfriend. I guess I asked for that one."
"Jesus, special ed, you…"
Gabriel freezes. Chuck regards him with the calm, detached gaze of a journalist; he looks ready and poised to write down the story that will win him the Pulitzer.
"I shouldn't have said that."
"What, 'special ed?' I'm sure you've said worse things."
Gabriel's shoulders are trying desperately to crawl in on themselves, like if he can make himself smaller he can somehow hide from his own shame. "I blasphemed."
"You…Oh. I thought it was taking God's name in vain that was blasphemous."
"It's either. Both. Christ and my Father are essentially the same." Gabriel curls his fingers back through his hair, the tug of sensation not quite pain, but it reminds him of Coyote and Raven and the others, stroking his cheeks and neck and forehead as they remade him. "I guess He isn't my Father anymore."
Chuck gives him a look that could probably be described as 'deer in headlights.'
"I don't know much about religion. Just what I've seen." He hesitantly reaches out, laying a hand on Gabriel's shoulder. Gabriel twitches like a startled horse, but doesn't lash out. He's too tired, and too sad, to do much more than glare, uselessly, at his own hands. "But I think, um, He probably doesn't care too much. In the long run."
That isn't the point. The point is that Gabriel could. The point is that Gabriel opened his mouth, and one of his Father's names came out, without reverence, without awe, without love. No angel would do that. No angel could. It's hardwired into their being, like fish being able to breathe underwater, or geese flying south for the winter.
"I'm really human," he says faintly.
Chuck curls his fingers around Gabriel's shoulder, holding on, weighty and stupidly comforting. Gabriel presses the heels of his palms against his eyes, remembering Coyote's last words – no longer equals, but predator and prey.
He feels something hot streak down his face, rolling over his palms, and he holds his hands out, examining them. The skin between his fingers is wet.
"I'm crying," he says.
"Yeah," Chuck responds. "You sorta get used to it."
~
The hospital gives Chuck strict instructions as he's signing the release forms. Gabriel listens to them with half an ear, trapped in his wheelchair: "He's got a fairly substantial vitamin C deficiency, you need to increase his intake, maybe get him some multivitamins, otherwise he'll get scurvy," and, "He's got some scarring on his abdomen that looks fresh, you might want to keep an eye on it, just in case it hasn't healed properly."
Gabriel glances down the front of his hospital gown (the stupid kind, the kind that just lets your ass hang out the back). His stomach is a mass of raw, red-looking scars. He never noticed. The gods did a fine job, remaking him, but he supposes sewing together a body is a little different from sewing together a soul. They had probably been stretched thin as it was. He doesn't blame them.
Chuck wheels him outside. He has to hold the chocolate rabbit in his lap, still all wrapped up in plastic, its idiot eyes staring at him. Accusing. You failed. You failed your Brothers. You failed your Father. You should have been able to stop Lucifer. You could have fixed everything.
The first thing he's going to do is bite the little fucker's head off.
Chuck bundles him into the passenger seat of an old Ford station wagon. "I got it when I was in college," he says, like he's afraid Gabriel will start doubting his manhood or something. A few hours ago, Gabriel was pissing through a tube into a plastic bag. He has no room to be casting stones.
Fuck. A whole day trapped in a car with the prophet. Once, he would have been able to spread his wings and fly to Kripke's Hollow, faster than any pissy human car, faster than light or sound or thought. He could have been there before Chuck even blinked. He could have gone anywhere. Anywhere.
Gabriel rests his forehead against the cool window, breathing out a circle of fog onto the glass. He draws a smiley face in it with the tip of his finger as Chuck starts the car, and then pulls ponderously out of the hospital's parking lot.
One day.
~
They don't get to keep the wheelchair, so an entire day of non-stop driving later and Chuck pulls Gabriel out of the passenger seat using his bare hands and no small amount of cursing. Gabriel's legs feel like jelly – the long period of inactivity has given his muscles time to rally themselves and protest his poor treatment of them.
"My legs," he manages to wheeze, and Chuck lets him rest against the hood of the car while he explains things like Charley horses and pulled muscles. Gabriel had no idea so many things could go wrong with his body. It's sort of terrifying.
It's sort of exhilarating, too. He's human. He struggles to make that idea sink in, but he's continually overwhelmed by every sight and sound and sensation, now that he's free of the overbearing presence of the hospital. He feels pain more acutely than he did as an angel.
It occurs to him that the ache in his chest, the soul-searing hole in him, also has a human name.
"I think I might be depressed," he says conversationally, as Chuck loops one arm around his waist, helping him to stumble into the prophet's house. The place smells like pizza and ink and about a hundred different kinds of alcohol. It's a riot of sensory input, and Gabriel reels back for a moment, stunned. Chuck holds on to his shoulder while his skin shudders and he tries to process everything, all at once. It's too much.
"Just breathe," Chuck says. He sounds panicked.
Gabriel forces himself to take a deeper breath than usual. It feels like drowning. The next one goes down easier, and he imagines his lungs ballooning outward with air. Like big, fleshy, vein-filled beach balls. It startles a laugh out of him, and all the air goes rushing back out.
"You aren't depressed if you're laughing," Chuck points out.
"I was just thinking about how fun it would be to play volleyball with a human lung."
Chuck makes a face that Gabriel thinks might imply disgust, or fear. He isn't sure. He had always been able to see peoples' souls, before, so it's harder to read people without that metaphysical mood ring.
Chuck helps him to the living room, depositing him on a couch that's more spring than cushion, and then drifts into what Gabriel assumes is a kitchen. He hears glass clinking.
"Do you drink? I mean, you drank when I wrote you, but you're different now, really different."
Gabriel has no idea. He used to drink. Once, he had made a habit of immersing himself in all the extremes humanity had to offer – the best food, the most potent alcohol, the most beautiful men and women. It had partly been out of curiosity, and partly out of necessity – humans feel everything so much more acutely, mired as they are in their bodies, chained to their senses. The subtlety of a good Pinot Noir would have been lost on him, before. Now, all the sweets that he had craved as an archangel seem like too much. He isn't sure how he'll respond to booze.
Or sex, for that matter, but he supposes that's something he'll deal with later.
"I have no idea," he answers. The glass Chuck brings out to him is halfway filled with something that looks like liquid amber. "Bourbon," Chuck explains, and sets it down on the worn coffee table. Gabriel watches Chuck knock back a glass of his own, then shrugs and reaches for the alcohol.
~
Puking sucks exactly as much as Gabriel suspected it would.
"Maybe start with wine coolers next time," Chuck muses.
Gabriel gives him the finger in between dry-heaves.
~
Gabriel sleeps in fits and starts. He knows he slept during his five days of walking, whenever it became too dark for him to see the road ahead, and that one time he drifted off while he was still moving…except slept isn't so good a term as passed out. He doesn't remember ever closing his eyes, only the slam of awareness whenever he woke. It had been disorienting and frightening – he'd never felt so vulnerable, not even when the Winchesters had trapped him in a ring of fire. Not even when Lucifer held his own blade against his stomach.
Every time he starts to drift off again, he worries he won't be coming back. He just…won't wake up. Because yeah, being human sucks, and there's always some dark part of him spewing reasons as to why he should just give up – he's going to get sick and age and his body's going to fail him, he has no family, he's lost everything - but he's kind of irrationally fond of his own continued existence. Especially now that he's had a taste of what lies behind door number two.
"Morning, sunshine," he hears, and cracks open one eye. His cheek is pressed against the worn arm of the sofa, too ancient to have any texture left to it. There's a spring digging into his back and his stomach hurts. Chuck looks bizarrely cheerful, considering how much he drank the previous night – Gabriel hates him on sight.
"I hate you," he says. Well, groans, really. Chuck leans down, smiling. Gabriel quietly hates him a little bit more.
"Get up," Chuck says. "I'm gonna teach you how to make breakfast. Pancakes and coffee sound good?"
Gabriel doesn't want breakfast. He doesn't want to sleep. He wants to remain awake and hungry for the rest of this unnatural life he has been given, letting the discomfort drive him on, letting it ground him. He wants to harness it, use it to find his brother, and the Winchesters. He wants to do something, something that will…help, maybe.
He doesn't want to waste his time on pancakes.
Chuck hauls him into the kitchen anyways.
"Becky was really good at making breakfast," he says softly; he takes a box of instant pancake mix out of the pantry, then a pan from a cupboard beneath his stove. Gabriel tilts his head.
"What happened? Between you and your lady love?"
Chuck's shoulders hunch as he fills a Big Gulp cup with water. "We didn't work out."
"You're gonna have to be more specific than that – I can't exactly read your mind any more."
"That's not the point of being human," Chuck complains. "I don't want you reading my mind. I don't want you to know about Becky or me or my writing or anything. I want you to know what I tell you! People tell each other what they want to say and that's it. That's all. End of story."
Gabriel splays his hand out across his stomach – the mass of scar tissue is hot underneath his thin shirt. Chuck pulls a stick of butter out of the fridge. He smears it across the bottom of the pan until the whole thing is oil-slick and shiny.
"You could've just told me," Gabriel says.
He gets pancake batter all over his fingers, and the first one turns out nearly blackened because Chuck didn't explain how long to let it cook, but it's food that isn't a giant chocolate Easter bunny or berries from the side of the road, and to Gabriel's newly human tongue it's the most amazing thing he's ever tasted.
~
The scar tissue on his stomach doesn't fade, but it stretches, and after a few days it doesn't ache any more, and he can reach up to cupboards to pull down plates and cups without feeling like his intestines are going to come tumbling out of his body. Chuck spends most of his time writing – sometimes he talks about it, but most of the time he sits quietly with a bottle of vodka, or beer, or whiskey close to his elbow, his chin in his palm.
"Sam says yes," Chuck informs him on the third day. Gabriel shrugs and pulls out bread from the cupboard, spray-cheese and ham and a dozen other things from the fridge. He's been trying to teach himself how to make a sandwich. He thinks he almost has it. Never mind what Chuck says about just piling stuff on bread - there's an art form here, and he wants to perfect it.
"Sam says yes," Chuck repeats, and Gabriel scowls as he shakes the can of cheese spray.
"I heard you the first time."
"And you don't care?"
He doesn't want to let himself care. "If I'm lucky, he'll hold off until I've made this fuckin' sandwich."
Chuck takes a drink from his bottle-of-the-hour and watches Gabriel laboriously arrange slices of deli ham.
~
He gets a solid week of recovery. Seven days to teach himself how to cook and eat, how to bathe himself and how to put band-aids on cuts. Pain is still a new thing, and it sneaks up on him, even after he's sure that he's used to the idea of it. The first time he gets a paper cut he has to lock himself in the bathroom for an hour, running it under cold water and crying like a child. Like a human.
It hurts, somehow worse than his legs after five days of walking, and all Chuck does is laugh and tell him that it'll be mostly healed by the next day. Gabriel hates him, but he sort of likes him, too. The prophet doesn't baby him or bring him breakfast in bed – doesn't even give him a bed, in fact – he just tells Gabriel how to do things, and then lets him figure it out on his own.
He wakes up sometime around midnight on Sunday, and finds Chuck already dressed and sitting at his laptop, a glass – an actual glass - of bourbon next to the keyboard, expression contemplative. When Chuck glances at him, there's something off about his eyes. They're too…
Gabriel isn't sure. There's so much he took for granted, and now he has to muddle through his emotions, and other peoples' emotions, the same as every other human. He hates it.
"Prophet?"
"Go back to sleep, Gabriel," Chuck murmurs. His fingers tap absently at the keyboard. Gabriel isn't sure if he's actually writing something, or if it's just a nervous habit. "It's been a long week."
Gabriel's hand strays to his stomach. He does that a lot. He figures it's like, a comfort thing, maybe. Checking to make sure he's real, he's alive…that his second chance isn't about to up and run on him.
Chuck follows the movement with his eyes. He's wearing a white shirt. Gabriel didn't even know Chuck owned a white shirt.
"Chuck," he says, uncertain, and the prophet smiles at him.
"I know I said I don't know much about God," Chuck says. "Only what I'm told. But I think He's proud of you, Gabriel. I think He probably still loves you."
Chuck turns back to the laptop. "Try and sleep, Gabriel. Sweet dreams."
"You humans are fucking weird," Gabriel says, but finds himself stumbling back to the couch anyways, collapsing on it in the dark, pressing his cheek to the worn arm. He closes his eyes, wondering if he'll end up opening them again, or if the world will end while he sleeps. Maybe Lucifer will make it quick. He doubts it, but…maybe.
Gabriel drifts off, and for once he isn't jolted awake by bizarre nightmares. For once, he isn't afraid of never waking up.
~
Chuck disappears, that night. Or maybe that morning. Gabriel's a little hazy on the timeframe, but he knows he fell asleep around midnight, and he woke up around ten, so it was sometime in between that the prophet pulled a vanishing act. Everything is exactly where it should be – the laptop on the desk, the bottles of beer glinting in the window, the copies of Supernatural books lying in piles of shame around the bookshelves on the far wall, like they aren't even fit to share the same space as real literature.
Everything is there, except for Chuck.
In the kitchen, he finds a plate containing a sandwich, placed carefully in the center of the table. Next to it is a piece of lined notebook paper with the words 'Keys are on the table, make yourself at home' written in sprawled, lopping cursive. It doesn't look like Chuck's handwriting at all.
Gabriel takes his time eating the sandwich. Swiss and ham. The simplicity of it surprises him – he sort of likes it.
The phone rings. Gabriel stares at it, one hand still holding the sandwich. He realizes he should probably answer it. What if it's Chuck? What if this whole thing is just a big fluke and Chuck just went out to buy more Wild Turkey or something?
He gingerly picks the phone up from its cradle, holding it to his ear. He takes another bite of ham and swiss.
Predictably, it isn't Chuck.
"Um, hello? It's Becky, I got your email last night and you told me to call…? Something about an archangel and the end of the world and Sam and ohmygod Sam, is he alright? Did something happen? Chuck, please tell me nothing bad happened!"
Gabriel holds the phone out in front of him, then shrugs and hangs up. The world hasn't ended yet, despite Sam saying yes, and he finds that all he really wants is to finish his sandwich and try to figure out whether Chuck was just being Chuck the other night, or if it's…something else.
He misses his brothers and sisters. He misses his Grace.
Becky calls back maybe five minutes later, and Gabriel tells himself that the only reason he picks the phone up again is because he doesn't want some crazed woman showing up and kicking down the door.
~
The keys to the house and the station wagon are on the table next to the front door, exactly like the note said.
Gabriel tries on a pair of Chuck's jeans and is surprised when they fit almost perfectly.
~
Gabriel teaches himself how to shave, with Becky's enthusiastic help via the webcam on Chuck's laptop. He finds an open pack of Gillette razors underneath the bathroom sink, and spends a few minutes just…looking at one. Figuring out how it works.
The blades are sharp. He thinks he could probably pry them out of the plastic, if he tries hard enough. There's got to be a hammer around here somewhere.
"Gabriel? What are you doing?"
He sets the razor down again.
"Nothing," he says. Second chances aren't meant to be wasted.